October 2008           Global Health: From Catastrophe to Cure

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Speakers

At KPFA Garrett worked in management, in news and in radio documentary production. A documentary series she co-produced with Adi Gevins won the 1977 George Foster Peabody Award in Broadcasting, and other KPFA production efforts by Garrett won the Armstrong and CPB Awards. After leaving KPFA Garrett worked briefly in the California Department of Food and Agriculture assessing the human health impacts of pesticide use. She then went overseas, living and working in southern Europe and subsaharan Africa, freelance reporting for Pacifica Radio, Pacific News Service, BBC-Radio, Reuters, Associated Press and others.

In 1980 Garrett joined National Public Radio, working out of the networkís San Francisco and, later, Los Angeles bureaus as a Science Correspondent. During her NPR years Garrett was awarded by the National Press Club (Best Consumer Journalism, 1982), the San Francisco Media Alliance (Meritorious Achievment Award in Radio, 1983), and the World Hunger Alliance (First Prize, Radio, 1987).

In 1988 Garrett left NPR to join the science writing staff of Newsday, where she remained until 2004.
Her Newsday reporting has earned several awards, including the Newsday Publisherís Award (Best Beat Reporter, 1990), Award of Excellence from the National Association of Black Journalists ("AIDS in Africa", 1989), Deadline Club of New York ("Best Beat Reporter", 1993), First Place from the Society of Silurians ("Breast Cancer", 1994), and the Bob Considine Award of the Overseas Press Club of America ("AIDS in India", 1995).
During the academic year 1992-93 Garrett attended Harvard University as a visiting fellow in the Harvard School of Public Health.

Over the years Garrett has contributed chapters to numerous books, including AIDS IN THE WORLD, edited by Jonathan Mann, Daniel Tarantola and Thomas Netter, Oxford University Press, 1993; and DISEASE IN EVOLUTION: GLOBAL CHANGES AND EMERGENCE OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES, Mary E. Wilson, edit., New York Academy of Sciences, 1994.

She has also written for many publications, including Foreign Affairs, Esquire, Vanity Fair, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and Current Issues in Public Health. She has appeared frequently on national television programs, including "ABC Nightline", "The Jim Lerher NewsHour", "The Charlie Rose Show", "The Oprah Winfrey Show", "Dateline", "The International Hour" (CNN) and "Talkback" (CNN).

Peter Okaalet, MD

Senior Director, Health and HIV/AIDS Policy, MAP International

Dr. Peter Okaalet holds a Doctor of Medicine degree from Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, and two graduate degrees in Theology from the Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology. Named a "Global Health Hero" by TIME magazine's Global Health Summit in 2005, Dr. Okaalet has been recognized for leading the way for faith communities to join in the battle against HIV/AIDS. He serves on the international faculty at Haggai Institute and is a part-time lecturer at the Africa Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF) training school. Dr. Okaalet offers 15 years of experience in reproductive health, specializing in the advocacy, policy formulation, research design and implementation of HIV/AIDS programs. His current assignments include strategic planning, capacity building for faith-based institutions and organizations, community mobilization and advocacy and design and implementation of behavior change interventions. He currently serves on several working committees on HIV/AIDS interventions with the World Bank, UNAIDS, the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance's HIV/AIDS strategy committee, the Pan-African Christian AIDS Network (PACANET), and PATH.

Read the Time Magazine profile

Jalaa' Abdelwahab

Jalaa’ Abdelwahab is the Technical Officer/Epidemiologist for the Poliomyelitis Eradication Unit of the World Health Organization (WHO) Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office (EMRO) based in Cairo, Egypt. He is assigned in this position by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) since 2004. His work entails extensive travel to priority countries including Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan and Somalia. His missions primarily focus on planning and conducting house-to-house national polio immunization campaigns as well as on training and evaluating surveillance systems for detecting suspected polio cases in those countries.

Jalaa’ was born and raised in Ramallah, Palestine. He graduated from Hope College with a BS in Biology and a minor in Biochemistry in 1997. At Hope, some of his favorite courses included poetry writing and painting. Pursuing his interest in building communities that are founded on principles of equality and comprehensive well-being, he decided to pursue his Masters of Public Health in Epidemiology focusing on International Health from University of Michigan School of Public Health, Ann Arbor, MI (2000). In 2000, he was selected for the Public Health Prevention Service (PHPS) fellowship program at CDC. Under this programme, he became involved in the global polio eradiation initiative working in the WHO African Regional Office in Harare, Zimbabwe. He also worked for two years with the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene on epidemiological investigations of tuberculosis in the city. Upon completing his fellowship in 2003, he joined CDC as a Public Health Advisor in the Polio Eradication Branch providing technical support to Egypt and India.

Jalaa’ enjoys applying his epidemiological skills to practical field experiences and believes the best part of his job is being able to work directly with people and communities in different parts of the world. The EMRO region faces stark realities of insecurity, wars and on-going conflicts. Despite these challenges, he is committed to the belief that children, wherever they are, should enjoy the right of living a life free of vaccine preventable diseases especially this crippling fatal disease called polio.

Nicole Buono

Nicole Buono graduated from Hope College in 1993 with a double major in International Studies and French. After graduating from Hope College, Ms Buono served two years in the US Peace Corps in Benin. It was living and working in rural Africa that she saw the importance of public health and decided to pursue a Master's degree in Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. Over the past ten years Ms Buono has worked for several international organizations implementing health programs primarily for women and children. She has resided in Benin, Ghana, Senegal and South Africa and travelled to twenty other countries mostly in Africa. Ms Buono is currently a Project Director for the Global Call to Action project at the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation based in Washington, DC. In her current position she manages a multi-country program for the prevention, care and treatment of HIV for families, which is funded under the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief by the US Agency for International Development. She resides in Cheverly, Maryland with her husband, John and one year old daughter, Malaika.

David Cunningham

David S. Cunningham is Professor of Religion and Director of the CrossRoads Project at Hope College. He also serves as the college's advisor for the Fulbright, Rhodes, and Marshall Scholarship programs. He holds degrees from Northwestern University, the University of Cambridge, and Duke University. His research interests are in Christian theology, Christian ethics, and theology's relationship to literature and the arts. He has published seven books, including most recently Christian Ethics: The End of the Law (Routledge) and Friday, Saturday, Sunday: Literary Meditations on Suffering, Death, and New Life (Westminster/John Knox).

 

Laura Ellis

Laura Ellis received a BA in Music with a French minor from Hope College in 2005. As a pre-medical student at Hope, Laura went to Nicaragua in 2002 and Annville, KY in 2005 for medical spring break mission trips. She taught HIV/AIDS education in Swaziland, Africa before working for 2 years as a nurse's aide at Saint Thomas Hospital in Nashville, TN 2005-6 and North Ottawa Community Hospital in Grand Haven, MI 2006-7. Laura volunteered at Hope Clinic for Women in Nashville and then with the drug assistance program at the Holland Community Health Center.

Laura began working on her masters degree in public health in 2007 at Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University in Atlanta, GA, where she is pursuing a concentration in community health and development and a faith and health certificate. She works at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in the malaria branch for the President's Malaria Initiative, which provides support to malaria control programs in 15 African countries.

This summer, Laura spent 3 months in South Africa working with African Religious Health Assets Programme (ARHAP) on Religion and the Sexual Health of Young People. The ARHAP research team held workshops for young people and community leaders in Potchefstroom and Johannesburg to understand how religion can make a positive contribution to the sexual well-being of young people in South Africa.

Tarah Fron

Tarah Fron, 23, is from Byron Center, MI. She graduated from Hope College in May of 2007 with a BA in English and Political Science. While at Hope, she participated in lacrosse, intramural sports, Dance Marathon, Relay for Life; and was a member of Alpha Phi Omega and Pi Sigma Alpha. Upon graduating from Hope, she joined a non-profit organization, Institute for International Cooperation and Development (IICD), and spent 13 months as a volunteer. Six of those months, she volunteered in Kaoma, Zambia, where she worked with those infected and affected by HIV/AIDS through education, trainings and monitoring of support groups.

 

Tim Geary
Timothy Geary is a Michigan native, born in Grand Rapids in 1952. He attended the University of Notre Dame from 1971-75, majoring in Biology, before earning a PhD in Pharmacology at the University of Michigan in 1980, studying the biochemical genetics of cytochrome P450 enzymes. Tim then began working in tropical medicine as a postdoctoral fellow at Michigan State University, studying the biochemistry and chemotherapy of the major human malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, which still kills more than a million children per year in the tropics. This led to an appointment as a faculty member in the Department of Microbiology and Public Health at MSU and allowed him to do field trials of antimalarial drugs in Sudan. Dr. Geary moved to the Upjohn Company in Kalamazoo in 1985 to join the antiparasitic drug discovery unit, a group he led beginning in the mid-1990s. Tim decided to return to the academic environment after being recruited to join the Institute of Parasitology at McGill University in Montreal as a Professor and Canada Research Chair in 2005, becoming the Director of the Institute in 2007. His research at McGill is focused on understanding the mechanisms of action of antiparasitic drugs, new technologies for the discovery of drugs for the treatment of parasitic infections, developing a better understanding of the molecular biology of the host-parasite interface in human lymphatic filariasis.


Jonathan Hagood

Jonathan Hagood is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, a position he began in Fall 2008. He teaches Latin American history as well as courses in the history of science and medicine, world history, and the Spanish Atlantic World. His recent research focused on the history of social medicine and public health in 1930s-50s Argentina. Other projects have included the history of nuclear research in Argentina and nuclear weapons policy and history. Currently, Professor Hagood is extending his study of the history of scientific and medical research in Argentina while starting a project on Latino history in Western Michigan. He holds a Ph.D. (2008) and an M.A. (2005) in Latin American History from the University of California, Davis. His undergraduate background is in architecture and Latin American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin (1998). Before undertaking graduate study, Professor Hagood worked in the architecture industry, was a founding partner in an information technology consulting firm in San Francisco, and taught as an adjunct at City College of San Francisco and Tarleton State University, Central Texas. His wife, Amy, is currently expecting their second child.

Kristen Johnson

Kristen Deede Johnson is Director of the Studies in Ministry Minor, Associate Director of the CrossRoads Project, and Assistant Professor of Political Science at Hope College. She is also the faculty advisor for Hope's chapter of Acting on AIDS. She holds degrees from the University of Virginia and the University of St. Andrews. Her research interests are in the areas of Christian theology, political theory, culture, and social justice. Her first book was entitled Theology, Political Theory, and Pluralism: Beyond Tolerance and Difference (Cambridge University Press) and she has just begun work on a second book, What's So Amazing About Justice? (Baker Academic).

 

Laura Kadzban Pridgeon

Laura graduated from Hope College in May 2006, with a B.S. in Social Work and Spanish. During her time at Hope, she was involved in the American Cancer Society Relay For Life, spring break mission trips, and was a campus ministries small group leader. During college, she spent one summer in Malawi, volunteering for Save Orphans Ministries, an organization that works with orphans and their caregivers. Following graduation, she moved to Zambia, Africa and spent one year there with World Hope International Zambia. She worked closely with the development and implementation of the Home-Based Care program for people living with HIV/AIDS, the Nutrition Program for Children Under Five, and Reach4Life, an HIV-prevention program for youth. Laura now lives in Columbus, Ohio where her husband is attending medical school at The Ohio State University. She works for the Ohio Association of Free Clinics and the Ohio Optometric Association. She is also doing youth ministry, counseling and case management for families from their downtown church.

Maria Lapinski

Maria is joint appointed as an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication, the National Food Safety and Toxicology Center, and the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station at Michigan State University. Dr. Lapinski received her doctorate in 2000 from MSU and her master’s of arts from University of Hawaii, Manoa. She researches the impact of messages and social-psychological factors on health and environmental risk perceptions and behaviors with a particular interest in culturally-based differences and similarities. To this end, Dr. Lapinski has conducted research projects with her colleagues in a number of countries in Asia, the Pacific Rim, Central America, and Africa. Her research team’s most recent international research project looked at perceptions of environmental and health risks among youth on the Mexico-U.S. border (Ambos Nogales). Her work has been published in public health and communication journals and is currently funded by the National Science Foundation and the USDA. Professor Lapinski’s favorite courses to teach are undergraduate and graduate risk communication, health communication for diverse populations, and international health communication.

Robert McDonald

Having worked 25 years in many global locations with the Dow Chemical Company, Dr. Robert McDonald, a business man and engineer, concluded that an improved, family sized water remediation device could be developed -- one that generates clean disinfected water from highly polluted water. Further, this device could be inexpensive, utilize known technology, include no moving parts, require no electrical power, and be made of local materials, by the local people. This then becomes a useful, initial tool in establishing the needed transformation. And finally, from this base, locally owned businesses can be formed to which this technology is transferred, thus establishing the basis for improvements and sustainability.

Today, Aqua Clara has begun to accomplish its mission at its Beta Site through the creation of local partnerships, developing sustainable, locally owned businesses that provide clean water and the associated services needed for their group's children and families. Our family sized water purifier fills the necessary requirements as a first step in supplying clean water and user sustainability.

Will Nettleton